Clashes of the titans
A thumping physical confrontation testing mind, muscle and sinew to the ultimate degree, and from which there could only be…
The right track
Sebastian Coe’s new job as head of world athletics will be a heck of a lot easier thanks to the…
Captain Cook proves good guys can triumph
The roar of the Premier League is beginning to drown out everything else in sport (there’s even Friday night football…
Champions of absurdity
Jumping the shark isn’t yet an Olympic sport, but if it were the International Olympic Committee would be a shoo-in…
Australia’s comeback kids
I have never met an Aussie I didn’t like, but, crikey, their sporting indefatigability is exhausting. Don’t they ever give…
Kyrgios is surely just what tennis needs
Well thank heaven for Nick Kyrgios. The lavishly inked, blinged and barbered Aussie is quite one of the most thrilling…
Tiger, Tiger, burning out
A car crash is a terrible thing, but hordes of people still slow down to cop an eyeful on the…
The Kiwi tourists are a living lesson
A rather desultory Test series is taking place in the Caribbean where Australia are marmalising the West Indies, with a…
Thrills and chivalry at the most civilised place on earth
If heaven is a place on earth, as Belinda Carlisle so wisely observed, then surely that place has to be…
A few tips for Straussie
If you watched England’s three-day Test defeat by the West Indies in Barbados the other day to the bitter end…
Come on you blues. Or, er, reds
Here’s an election-winning idea for Dave: forget about Aston Villa (or West Ham) and become a full-on Bournemouth fan. They…
Cricket’s glorious dead
He’s a tall man, Kevin Pietersen, and he casts a long shadow. It loomed large over the Long Room at…
Can McIlroy become the magnificent seventh?
The grand slam in golf is a feat almost impossible to imagine now. It meant winning all four golfing majors…
New heights
For anyone who knows or cares about rock climbing — a minority sport if ever there was one, albeit pretty…
Sacré Bleus! At least the food is good
It used to be such a treat of a winter weekend, sitting down to watch France against Wales in Paris…
Little teams mean a lot
Graeme Swann arrived late for the last cricket World Cup. His wife had given birth before the tournament and he…
A cheerleader to swear by
It wasn’t that long ago when the most exciting event in any British tennis fan’s life was whether Jeremy Bates…
Bats out of hell
What a remarkable innings that was in Johannesburg earlier this week when South Africa’s admirable Hashim Amla carried his bat…
Myths and legends
‘As a leader and a man, he is incomparable to anyone I have ever worked with.’ Obviously quite some guy,…
Fifteen things we learned about sport this year
It was the year of KP, Keano and the Kiwis; of Federer, Froch and Phil the Power (no change there…
Tackling Jim Murphy
The author of a rather brilliant little book about football could just hold the key to Labour’s otherwise negligible prospects…
Cricket must return to Pakistan
In a tiny courtyard just off the teeming alleys of Lahore’s old town, a young Pakistani boy in a gleaming…
Is Test cricket heading for its last innings?
Lions and weasels The Archers and Test cricket: words you rarely find in the same sentence and more’s the pity…
Pietersen’s unlikely Passage to India
A typical Merchant-Ivory film, their biography informs me, features ‘genteel characters’ whose lives are blighted by ‘disillusionment and tragic entanglements’.…
Enjoying the Ryder
Well, that was a lot of fuss wasn’t it? The Ryder Cup is a strange old creation, only fractionally less…
